Friday, March 06, 2015

UAE: Too Good to be True?

My phone has been red hot this past week, with colleagues keen to discuss the politics behind the FEI’s unprecedented cancellation of two UAE CEI’s as the endurance crisis escalates. So it was a relief when one buddy called with this practical query: will disaffiliating these rides affect horse and rider FEI qualifications for anything important?

I replied: “It’s funny you should ask.” Because I was just completing enquiries into a 120km CEI qualifier (for last month’s President’s Cup) whose results listings on the FEI database suggest that when you are short of qualifications for something important, one simple solution might be to apply a bit of creativity!

A few weeks ago, colleagues at Horse & Hound and myself were tipped off, by different people, that a scheduled ride in Dubai on January 21at was not all it seemed. I then asked further local sources who were genuinely surprised to learn that a FEI 2* qualifier took place on January 21st and could not understand how they had managed to miss it. Everything about it reads oddly...